Margaret Hamilton (back as the Wicked Witch of the West), Betty White (pre-Golden Girls), some disco, and (ahem) the band KISS—this hour-long special sounds gay as hell. Too bad I never watched it. I might have, but before I could do so, Mom suddenly drove my siblings and me to her sister’s house for an overnight stay; Aunt Inez, the intellectual, didn’t own a TV. Since the divorce, Mom had spent time by herself to (in her words) “relax.” Okay, she deserved to “relax,” but she’d denied me my main relaxation method. Though her behavior did piss off Inez.

In 1973, Paul Lynde joined the hospital sitcom Temperatures Rising, retitled you-know-what for its second and final season. According to Wikipedia, he played a grouch named Dr. Paul Mercy. (Get it?)

I don’t remember if I watched even a minute of this show. But then, as a nine-year-old, I may have gotten distracted by my parents’ constant arguments about trivialities, such as that comic panel The Family Circus—Mom loved it, Dad despised it. (I loved it, too, but in secret, those tubby, stubby children amusing me with their cute malapropisms.) People still cared about the funnies back then, amazing.

From TV Guide, September 9, 1972, p. 53. Running across this image on my Facebook feed this morning inspired me to bring you yet another Flasher.–DVM, January 6, 2020, 11:33 AM EST

I may have watched some snippets of this lame sitcom as an eight-year-old in 1972. As with so many other kids back then, I’d watch anything on TV—good, bad, it didn’t matter, as long as it numbed my mind. Anyway, I remember nothing about this show except hearing the, uh, flamboyant Lynde say “Eeeeugh” after his supergenius son-in-law has once again done something idiotic, though perhaps I’ve made up this memory. Perhaps my status back then as a closeted gay boy in a gay-unfriendly environment has compelled me toward imagining myself as precociously hip.

I know I had a three-month relationship between marriages, twenty years ago, but I can barely recall the guy in question. He wore blue three-piece suits, and had a mole on I think his right cheek. Otherwise, nothing. I can’t even remember his name—Dan? Stan? We must have had sex at least once, at least I have the feeling we did, which makes my haziness regarding him a bit surprising, since I never forget a sexual partner, even the lame ones. Perhaps as I’ve grown older, my brain has started sorting out the chaff; everyone wants a chaffless life.

Yo, incels: I know why the worst Chads nab the hottest Stacys. Years ago, those Chads started feigning Chaddishness. They pretended they’d lost their virginity during grade school; they pretended their sexual conquests totaled in the quadruple-digits; they pretended they didn’t have crushing student-loan debt. And eventually, the fake Chads turned into real ones. Stacys drool over male confidence, real or not, the best way to distract themselves from worrying about climate catastrophe (or about Black Lives Matter, depending upon the Stacys’ politics).